Appendix 6.1 – [redacted] email

Appendix 6.1 Email cor­res­pond­ence with Email from sent on the 17 Octo­ber 2023 To: Sarah Hen­shall, Andy Ford, Jonath­an Wil­let, nature@​cairngorms.​co.​uk, Grant Moir, mailmanager@​cairngorms.​co.​uk CC: Ali McK­night; John Kirk, lan Wilson, Brew­ster, Anne Elli­ott, [email protected], Lewis Pâté

Kirsten Dear Sarah, Johna­thon, Andy etc

I am not sure if I did a writen response to the offi­cial Beaver ​“con­sulta­tion” and had assumed all our points raised at the Farm­ers meet­ing in Kin­gussie and the con­sulta­tion / engage­ment meet­ing in the Duke of Gor­don Hotel.

I under­stand the meet­ings at Lag­gan and Nethy­bridge seem to have been giv­en more focus than the Kin­gussie one. Pos­sibly because their imme­di­ate con­cerns were flood banks from dam­age and breach­ing from Beaver Bur­rows. Although we did not dis­cuss it dir­ectly in Kin­gussie it is still a con­cern to us on the Spey and its trib­u­tar­ies. Per­son­ally I have spent a lot of money in the last 7 years repair­ing my flood banks on the Gyn­ack for instance. They are adja­cent to the river so poten­tially at risk ?

So I think cthe main points are:

1: Nature Scot should NOT issue a licence for Beaver Release / Transloation until a PROP­ER BEAVER MIT­IG­A­TION PLAN is in place that is sat­is­fact­ory to loc­al farm­ers and crofters. This should be struc­tured to address some of the points below.

2: A prop­er writ­ten frame­work of sup­port and pay­ment assist­ance to land man­agers to cov­er any dam­age or remedi­al work as a res­ult of the intro­duc­tion of Beavers. Or reduc­tion in land value from wetting.

3: A prop­er writ­ten mit­ig­a­tion plan to cov­er things like areas where Beavers should be excluded from and where Bur­rows and or Dams etc would not be allowed.

4: Who removes the Beaver Dams ? Why should the farm­ers have to do it ? It is not their Beavers ?

5: What com­pens­a­tion will there be to dam­age to trees and oth­er nat­ur­al fea­tures etc ?

6: Dam­age to any wooden struc­tures of flood banks, paths etc ?

7: WHEN I ASKED NATURE SCOT WHO WOULD PAY TO REPAIR A BREACHED FLOOD BANK AT THE DUKE OF GOR­DON EVENT THEY SAID ​“NOT US BECAUSE WE HAVE NO MONEY”. REAPAIR­ING FLOOD BANK DAM­AGE CAN COSTS TEN’S OF THOU­SANDS TO REPLAIR — SO WHO WILL PAY FOR IT?

8: We wants a Beaver exclu­sion zone on the flood plain at Kin­gussie — Dell­more, Dell­Beag, Pit­main etc to stop drain­age ditches, chan­nels and canals from being blocked.

That is all I can think of for now but this needs to be on record. We are not in favour of the rein­tri­duc­tion of Beavers till the above have been addressed.

Thanks

PS: 1: One of the biggest issues raised at the Kin­gussie Meet­ing was that Farm­ers and Crofters feel like we are not included or con­sul­ted on most issues in the CNPA. There has been very little engage­ment for years since the days of Gor­don McCon­nach­ie. We are at the fore front of a lot of CNPA policy imple­ment­a­tion and should be onboard from the start. After­all we deliv­er a lot of ​“the heavy lift­ing” required to pro­duce the res­ults CNPA have com­mit­ted too when it comes to nature, biod­iversity and cli­mate change / car­bon cap­ture etc.

2: I do not think most of us even begin to under­stand car­bon off­set­ting, cap­ture, licen­ing, trad­ing — yet we are told we are a big part of it ? Why do we have to car­bon audits on our farms ? So that someo­body can SELL OFF the ​“loc­al jew­els” to off­set some­body elses car­bon. Why should we be made to feel guilty with our ​“pol­lut­ing cows” when an air­port can be ​“green” because it has declared itself car­bon neut­ral ?? Why is the car­bon cap­ture poten­tial of our lands being sold so oth­ers can con­tin­ue to pol­lute. Why is the CNPA help­ing this ​“grand scheme” by using pub­lic money for Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion so

land own­ers can sell their car­bon cap­ture poten­tial for even more ???? Is it all some weird scam, money mak­ing scheme to bene­fit large land own­ers ? I can­not be the only one ask­ing this ques­tion ? I heard it from a friend last that it feels like ​“Oth­ers are hav­ing a party on our behalf and we are being left to do the dishes?”

3: In view of the above point 2 why can com­munit­ies not get a per­cent­age of this ​“car­bon cash” to help provide things like loc­al com­munity housing.etc ? Because we are a NP we can­not get this com­munity fund­ing from Wind­mills. we were told we would be get­ting in the region of £1200 per year per tur­bine for two wind tur­bines that were planned near the vil­lage. That was almost 20 years ago so what would it be today ? Espe­cially witn the huge increase in power prices.

4: I have also heard of a £10 mil­lion deal to off­set car­bon for Gatwick Air­port if it is true I am sure you will know of it ? We also have Stand­ard Life / abrdn ​“devel­op­ing” their car­bon cap­ture on +/- 5000 acres at Far Ralia Kin­gussie / New­ton­more how exactly is the money made and by whom and because our nat­ur­al loc­al land­scape is being used why can the com­munit­ies not bene­fit if it is allow­ing oth­ers to ​“party on as before” and mot redu­cing car­bon footprint ?